Month: August 2008

Max has become a master of letting us know when he isn’t pleased (shown here with my student, Nick).
These times when he forces himself to cry, if we can figure out what he wants, he stops just as quickly as he started. It’s quite hilarious if you’re an observer, but not so much if you’re the one he’s aiming the Sad Face at.

Beware, queasy ones.
A couple days ago Nam went to a beauty salon to get her hair done and I tagged along to get a pedicure since my toenails tend to get painful if not cut correctly, and also because pedicures are the absolute best kind of addiction in a place like Thailand – inexpensive and actually good for you.
Nam’s usual shop was closed for some reason, but since we were already out on the only sizable chunk of free time for the week, we went to another place that we’d actually been to before but didn’t like so much because the older women running it do everything very slowly. On this day, however, it was still early and their shop was empty, so we decided to give it another shot.
I sat down and got a manicure first since I had to wait for Nam anyways, and soaked my feet in a bucket of water. What happened after the manicure was simply amazing.
The old lady unwrapped a long razor blade from the piece of wax paper it came packaged in, and began shaving away the callouses on my feet – I have LOTS of callouses on my feet. In fact, the balls of my feet as well as the heels are basically huge callouses. This stems from a bad case of athlete’s foot in Japan ten years ago that opened huge cracks in the bottom of my feet over which thick layers of skin eventually accumulated. I never thought this could even be removed, actually. However, the long soak had a great effect on this chitinous mass and huge swaths of dead skin flaked off with every pass of the razor. It piled up on the wet towel draped underneath my foot like a massive pile of grated cheese. To be more specific, it was like a massive pile of fetid, extra-sharp cheddar. In hindsight, maybe I should have saved it to put on an enemy’s piece of toast.
Anyway, after she was done shaving off the pedicheese, she smoothed everything down with an oblong plastic emery board. My feet felt fantastic! It must have showed on my face, because Nam had her feet worked on too.
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* This is the first time I’ve ever seen this service performed anywhere, at any price, even though I’d heard that it existed before.